Schools Matter: Nobody objects to teachers being evaluated on their effectiveness. Using gains on standardized tests is a bad way to do it.

Schools Matter: Nobody objects to teachers being evaluated on their effectiveness. Using gains on standardized tests is a bad way to do it.:

Nobody objects to teachers being evaluated on their effectiveness. Using gains on standardized tests is a bad way to do it.

by skrashen

Need for better evaluation system
Published in USA Today, Feb. 7, 2012
The article "States weaken tenure rights for teachers" emphasizes the importance of evaluating teacher effectiveness. A major problem is that these evaluations are often based on students' gains on standardized tests, called "value-added" measures.
A number of studies have shown that value-added measures are very unstable: Teachers' ratings based on previous years are weak predictors of test scores at the end of a year with new students. A teacher who